Vampire
Vampires are magically reanimated human corpses which are inhabited by the spirits of the deceased person and who closely resemble the living human they were before their transformation. Vampires feed and survive on the blood of the living, typically on that of humans (there are also rare occurrences of vampires feeding of other vampires), and they can also transform other humans into more of their kind by sharing their own blood with them. Vampires are one of the many known supernatural species that were created by witches. Creation A human who has consumed vampire blood in some way (whether by drinking it, having it poured into their open wound, or by being injected with it) and has subsequently died with the blood in their system will be magically revived as an undead vampire, just like the vampire who sired them. The exact nature of the human's death is irrelevant to this process; the only condition that must be met is that the body has to be more-or-less intact and able to function once they reawaken in transition, though the upper limits of physical damage upon a human body by which vampirism can recover has yet to be defined. Physiology Blood is the main component of a vampire's diet, be it human, animal or vampire blood. It is later explained by Cain that human blood is the key to immortality, which is why vampires, along with the first Immortals Cain and Vasilisa, need to drink it to maintain their eternal life. If a vampire fails to regularly drink blood, their body will become severely weakened, and will ultimately desiccate into mummification until they are able to get blood into their system. Blood (especially human blood) does not only satisfy a vampire’s thirst, but it also heightens their supernatural abilities, making them stronger, faster, and able to heal much more quickly than they would after not eating for a significant period of time. The longer a vampire abstains from blood, the more likely the vampire will becoming feral until they are eventually unable to resist feeding on whomever they come upon. In many cases, a vampire who has been starved for a long period and is risking desiccation will eventually become so overwhelmed with hunger that the lose all sense of their humanity and rationality altogether and finally give into their bloodlust. It has been demonstrated that vampire blood, just as with human and animal blood, can be used to revive a vampire who has been desiccated (even if they ordinarily do not partake in the consumption of vampire blood), and it can also help a badly injured vampire heal more quickly if human or animal blood is not available. However, human blood is most compatible with a vampire's dietary needs, and because of this, the majority of vampires rely on it as their sole food source. Despite their main food source being referred to as "human blood," this term also extends to the blood of both witches and werewolves who are in their human form, as their blood seems to be functionally identical to that of regular humans. Due to their acute senses, a vampire can detect whether or not a human has recently consumed alcohol or drugs, because their blood tastes unclean and can leave a vampire with a chemical aftertaste. This also extends to vervain as well, as vampires who feed on a human who regularly ingests vervain will be burned and weakened upon contact with their blood, which can often be used to the human's advantage. Due to a vampire's amplified senses and feelings, their hunger cravings are much stronger and harder to control than the mundane hunger for food that they felt when they were humans, and this hunger will often be connected to and amplified by powerful emotions. Vampires are magically preserved in the physical state that they were in when they died, therefore making a vampires body a freshly dead corpse, though it is reanimated and protected from decay with dark magic. Vampire's bodies remain in the exact same state as they were just prior to their deaths as humans (aside from the injuries or effects of most illnesses that caused their death) from an anatomical standpoint, except when it comes to their supernaturally-enhanced abilities and the addition of vampire's true face. Their true face is a slightly transformed version of their human face, which includes red, blood-shot sclera with protruding veins around the eyes, as well as elongated fangs. The bite of a vampire is so powerful that it can sever the limbs of both animals and humans, as vampires are known for having extremely sharp and strong teeth. Similarly, a vampire has human-like physiology, and their bodies continue to function normally as long as they have a steady diet of human blood; for example, their heart still beats to pump the blood they've consumed through their system to maintain their vitality. Because of this, vampires can eat human food, though it doesn't sustain their life or provide any nutrition like blood does, and their digestive system will continue to process it and produce wastes just as a healthy human's does. Regardless, many vampires continue to eat regular food for several reasons, including out of human habit, to maintain human appearances in order to prevent their exposure, and to help sublimate their eternal hunger for blood and thereby keep their bloodlust at a manageable level. Vampires can also become intoxicated by drugs such as alcohol and marijuana just as humans can, although they do have much higher tolerances due to their accelerated healing, which rapidly regenerates the cells damaged by these drugs which causes the sensation of being drunk or high. In fact, most vampires frequently drink alcohol throughout the day to help them deal with their perpetual hunger, much in the way that some vampires eat human food to help curb their cravings. Vampires are immune to the majority of human diseases and illnesses. One exception of this rule is cancer, though vampires cannot actually develop it-- they have to have had the cancer prior to being turned, as vampire blood cannot cure it in humans. These aforementioned vampires continue to have cancer even after their transition is complete, as cancer cells rapidly regenerate in the presence of vampire blood due to the cells being functionally immortal; normal human cells have "suicide buttons" that allow them to die once their organelles have worn out, but cancer cells have no such button, and vampire blood only serves to accelerate the regeneration of cancer cells. The only known substances that can have a serious negative effect on vampires are vervain and Werewolf Venom. However, it has also been discovered that, since vampires were created by magic, which also gave them their powers, their vampirism can be absorbed by certain rare witches of the Cascade Coven called Mavens. Mavens can also draw on vampires for more power for spells, and, since they exist as a loophole in the rules of Nature, they can also be transformed into witch-vampire hybrids while maintaining their powers of Mavening; even more, they are able to practice magic as though they were a full witch since they can draw on their own vampirism as a limitless source of magical power. As of now, there is only one such hybrid left currently living at this point-- Jace Wynn. Powers and Abilities The supernatural forces that sustain vampires also endow them with superhuman physical abilities as well as powers of mind control. Their physical abilities such as strength, speed, agility, durability, healing and senses all grow stronger with age and experience. Vampires who feed on animal blood will not be as powerful as those who feed on human blood. Human blood is also known to increase the speed of healing when ingested by a vampire after being seriously wounded. *'Super Strength:' Vampires are noticeably much stronger than Hunters, Immortals and Humans and slowly grow stronger as they grow older. They always have the advantage of superior strength in direct combat with a human. Even new vampires who are still in transition can toss an average-size, fully-grown human across a room with great speed and force. Their other feats include single-handedly lifting grown men high off the ground by the throat and snapping their necks, cutting off a person's head with their bare hands, and ripping out internal organs such as hearts with little to no effort. Their strength is also more powerful than that of Werewolves in their human form. Their strength allows them to jump higher and further than any natural creature. Vampires who feed on humans are stronger than those who feed on animal blood. Although noted that a vampires strength enhances with age, it can also be noted that the emotional status of the vampire takes a toll on the strength. *'Super Speed:' Vampires are much faster than supernatural hunters, immortals, humans, and werewolves in human form. Vampires can accelerate their movements to cover short distances in an instant, usually faster than the human eye can see. When running across long distances, they appear as vibrating blurs of motion allowing them to appear or vanish quickly and quietly. Their reflexes and dexterity are similarly heightened, allowing them to catch certain projectiles such as arrows and thrown stakes in the air with ease. Like their strength, their speed also increases with age. *'Super Agility:' Vampires possess super-human agility. They have shown that they can move quickly, jump very high, climb, and run incredibly fast without difficulty or exhaustion. Vampires can jump with their super speed too. Vampires that feed on human blood can jump much higher than vampires that feed on animal blood. This ability also increases with age. *'Super Senses:' Vampires have extremely keen senses of hearing, sight, smell, and taste that far exceed those of humans and werewolves. They can hear whispered conversations, even ones in far of buildings and on phones, though most vampires typically learn how to tune out most ambient noises when it's not necessary to hear them. Vampires can also smell blood from several meters away, and see in total darkness. These senses improve and grow stronger with age and experience. Their senses of taste are also enhanced as well, allowing them to detect the presence of drugs, alcohol, or vervain in someone's blood. *'Super Durability:' Vampires can take a great amount of physical damage without being slowed down. Even vampires who have been shot with wooden bullets, which have a weakening effect on vampires, have been seen to continue fighting so long as they were not shot in the heart or the head. Vampires still react to physical force in a human manner, particularly young vampires, who will occasionally be affected even by human-strength-level force. Vampires can also still be stunned and dazed by strikes and trauma, though their tolerance for it will increase as they get older. *'Healing Factor:' Vampires recover tissue from any form of physical damage to their bodies within seconds, though they still feel the pain of a wound before it heals. Vampires can snap their bones back into place after they have been broken and have been seen to fully recover from gunshots, stab wounds, and torso impalement very quickly, so long as they had consumed a regular diet of human blood prior to the injury. Those vampires who feed on animals will still heal much faster than a human, but their injuries, especially severe ones, will take much longer to heal than a vampire who feeds on human blood. The only injury a vampire can sustain that cannot be healed on its own or by consuming more blood is a werewolf bite, which requires Kol's blood or a very rare scientifically-created serum to cure. Also, a vampire's enhanced healing is limited to physical damage to their bodies—many forms of magical damage and psychological damage are beyond its capability. Vampires cannot grow back body parts, though they can reattach the severed limb with some effort. *'Immortality:' A vampire stops ageing once turned. Upon their transformation, vampires become immune to all conventional illness, diseases, viruses and infections. While vampires who were cancer-free as humans will be immune to cancer after they are turned, those humans who were turned while they had cancer will not only still have it as a vampire, but their newly-enhanced healing factor will accelerate the progression of the cancer cells over two-fold, nearly always causing the cancer-stricken vampire to kill themselves to end their suffering. *'Enhanced Emotions:' Vampires experience emotions more powerfully than humans. Emotions like love, joy, and happiness are magnified for vampires, allowing them to live life more intensely. This ability allows vampires to feel emotions at their peak regardless of their age. Immortal vampires have been shown experiencing emotions as powerfully today as they did 9,000 years ago. Conversely, sadness, depression, guilt, fear and anger are also amplified, causing many vampires to become so overwhelmed that they "turn off" their humanity to block out the more painful emotions. After time and practice, the overwhelming sensations of heightened emotions fade as the vampire learns to overcome their emotions without turning off their humanity all together. *'Emotional Control:' Vampires have the supernatural ability to remove or dull their emotions by "turning off" or "switching off" their humanity, which is directly connected to their emotions. Doing so allows them to block out their more negative emotions, such as fear and guilt, allowing them to feed and kill without remorse, go against any opponent without fear, and relieve themselves of painful feelings such as grief, loss, depression, and shame. A vampire without their emotions is far more calculating and direct than one who keeps them on. However, the vampire can become a remorseless killer, and are almost unrecognisable from the person they truly are, as blocking out negative emotions also causes their positive emotions to become dulled or nonexistent as well. Vampires are capable of turning their humanity back on and bringing back their emotions, but it is difficult as a result of the fact that they will be bombarded with all of their repressed emotions in addition to the guilt of anything they did without their humanity (such as killing or torturing innocent people or loved ones) with enhanced intensity. This ability fades with time and vampires who are over 500 years old have said that they have lost the ability to turn off their humanity altogether. *'Mind Compulsion:' Vampires have the ability to influence and control thoughts, emotions, and behaviour and can alter or erase memories. There is a sort of hierarchy as to how this ability works. Immortals and Demons can compel Humans, Doppelgängers, un-triggered Werewolves, regular Vampires, and werewolf-vampire Hybrids. Regular vampires, as weaker forms of their Immortal progenitors, cannot compel hybrids or other vampires, though they can compel the other aforementioned species. However, no vampire can compel a Witch or a Maven or a triggered Werewolf. Immortal vampires cannot compel other Immortals. *'Sire Bond:' Although rare among them, sire bonds can be formed when a human is turned with the blood of the vampire for whom they had strong romantic feelings before they were turned. Those vampires or hybrids with a sire bond are supernaturally loyal to their sires to the point that they will go out of their way to do whatever their sire asks them to do, even if they don't actually want to do it. However, this bond doesn't affect how they truly feel about their sire, it only affects their behaviour. *'Telepathy:' Vampires have a limited form of telepathy that allows them to easily enter the minds of humans, and with more effort, the minds of witches, werewolves, doppelgängers. They can also enter the minds of other vampires, though this ability is dependent on the vampire being younger or weaker than the one using telepathy. Ways to weaken a vampire to use telepathy on them are to starve them/drain them of blood, inject them with vervain, or expose them to werewolf venom. It is one of the hardest abilities to master, and because of this, it is usually the last of the mind-control-related abilities a vampire learns after becoming proficient in mind compulsion. Normally, this ability works through tactile contact, usually by the vampire placing the palms of his or her hands on the temples of the vampire whose mind they want to enter. The vampire then closes their eyes and focuses on the information they wish to seek, allowing them to sort through their victims' memories until they see what they're looking for. However, some have been shown to mentally communicate with others from a short distance without tactile contact in order to send distress calls and mental images during emergency situations. Like their physical attributes, a vampire's mental strength increases with age, making it difficult for a vampire to invade the mind of an ancient vampire such as one of the Immortals unless they are of similar age. **'Dream Manipulation:' Vampires can also use their power of telepathy to control dreams and the subconscious. This is an aspect of telepathy that is much easier to learn, and with it, a vampire has the ability to produce and modify dreams, bestow nightmares and lucid dreaming, distort people's perception of reality and trap someone in their dreams. Vampires can manipulate and enter the subconscious of other vampires and even an Immortal vampire if they are vulnerable enough. However, this is a learned skill that requires practice to achieve. **'Illusions:' Vampires have the power to trick the minds of other younger vampires into seeing/feeling things that aren't actually happening. *'True Face:' A vampire's true face is the appearance they are hiding under their normal human face. When a vampire's true face is revealed, the sclera of their eyes turns blood-red, dark veins appear under their eyes as the blood pumps forcefully through them, and their canine teeth extend into razor-sharp fangs. On some occasions, a vampire's fang teeth can include both their canines and their lateral incisors or both their canines and their premolars. A vampire's true face can be revealed whenever they wish, but it will appear against their will whenever they are aroused by the scent of blood, or are feeling intense emotions such as fear, anger, lust, sadness, etc. A vampire's fangs are extremely sharp which gives them the ability to tear into almost any substance (including and especially flesh) and tear off limbs. A vampire's true face will appear for the first time either while they drink human blood for the first time or shortly afterward. With the fangs come the darkened veins under the eyes as well. Weaknesses If vampires are killed by a wooden object stabbed through their heart, their body desiccates into a gray colour, and their vampiric veins thicken and protrude from their skin. Vampires can build up tolerances to some weaknesses, such as vervain, allowing them to protect themselves from compulsion by an Immortal and to help lessen the likelihood that it will seriously incapacitate them when used by enemies. However, it will still burn them upon contact, but if ingested, it will not weaken them as much if they take small amounts over time to increase their immunity. * Animal Blood: Animal blood, while somewhat satisfying a vampire's hunger and sustaining their undead life, will make the vampire considerably weaker than they would be if they had drank human blood, causing their physical abilities to be inferior to a human-blood-consuming vampire, making them heal much more slowly, and making their compulsion less effective. * Broken Neck: Breaking a vampire's neck will not kill them, but it will render in a death like state for varying amounts of time, depending on the diet and age of the person in question. * Decapitation: Dismembering or manually removing the head of a vampire will result in instant and permanent death. * Desiccation: Vampires who abstain from blood for extended amounts of time will eventually desiccate and mummify. Witches can use magic to desiccate a vampire. *'Fire:' Vampires are highly flammable and sensitive to fire, and will quickly burn and die from it if the flames are not extinguished in time. This quality has been proven to be useful in disposing of the remains of a dead vampire without any physical evidence. However, in some cases, vampires have used this vulnerability to their advantage. *'Heart Extraction:' Removing the heart of a vampire will result in permanent death. Vampires have the strength to plunge their hands right through the flesh of humans (including witches and doppelgängers), werewolves, or other vampires, allowing them to punch their hand through the thorax of a person and pull out their heart. If it is a vampire who has been subjected to this, then they will desiccate upon their death, causing their bodies to become a grey, dry husk with their vampiric veins exposed all over their body. *'Invitation:' Vampires cannot enter a home without an invitation by the owner. If they do not, they will begin to suffocate painfully and presumably would desiccate if they do not escape. If a vampire that wasn't invited in a human's house is forcefully shoved into the threshold, they will begin to bleed from the nose and eyes and feel immense pain. It has been revealed that invitation can be granted long-distance and even by someone who hasn't lived in the house in years. *'Magic:' Vampires are susceptible to the powers of witchcraft. This is inclusive of mystical objects. A Maven can also siphon the magic from a vampire to fuel their spells. Witches have been seen to use magic to cause agonising pain by inducing aneurysms in their brain or muscle spasms, telekinetically ripping out their hearts or snapping their necks, magically increasing their hunger for blood to unbearable levels, setting them ablaze with a single thought, and desiccating them to the point of mummification. *'Physical Trauma:' Minor physical injuries such as gunshots, stab wounds and broken bones will cause a pain and also slow them down. However, this is momentary as they will heal completely within seconds so long as they haven't been weakened by other means such as vervain or werewolf bites. *'Vampire Bloodline:' If an Immortal vampire dies, all vampires descended from their bloodline will slowly perish as well. *'Vervain:' Exposure to or ingestion of vervain causes a vampire to become severely feverish and weak to the point that it can even hinder their healing abilities as well. Also, physical contact with vervain will burn a vampire's skin. Vampires cannot compel anyone who has ingested vervain or has it on their person. Many vampires drink small amounts of diluted vervain to protect themselves from Immortal vampires' compulsion and to reduce its effects when used against them by enemies. *'Werewolf Bite:' The bite of a werewolf, which involves injecting a toxic venom into the wound, is extremely lethal to vampires. It will cause them to hallucinate, grow severely weak and go rabid until it kills them. Kol's hybrid blood is the only surefire way to cure the bite. Vampires suffering from the bite seem to always hallucinate either significant moments from their past, significant people in their lives, or specific actions of the vampire that they feel guilty or ashamed about. While typical vampires will eventually die from werewolf bites, it isn't lethal to Immortal vampires, though they still will experience the sickness and hallucination that accompanies it for several hours or even days, depending on how many bites/how much venom was ingested, until their body heals itself. *'Wood:' Wounding a vampire with a wooden weapon such as wooden bullets will incapacitate them, and it will take longer for them to heal their injuries than if the wounds were caused by any other substance. Stabbing a vampire through the heart with a wooden stake will result in instantaneous and permanent death. Myths *'Sunlight:' The vampire's are supposed to be non immune to sunlight and UV rays, it is supposed to burn them so that they die with contact and prolonged exposure, but they are really not, they are immune to it and it does not hurt them in any shape or form. *'Garlic:' The vampire's supposed repulsion towards garlic may have been a fabricated lie, similar to how werewolves are not actually immune to silver. This myth was presumably started to hide the fact that vampires are actually vulnerable to vervain. *'Holy Items: '''The myth that vampires could be harmed using holy artefacts like crosses, blessed ground, and holy water may have circulated from the belief that they are unholy creatures originating from Hell and in league with the Devil. *'Mirrors:' The myth that vampires did not cast a reflection may have come from the belief that vampires had no souls. *'Shapeshifting:' The origin of the myth that vampires had the power to morph into a bat, wolf, rat, or a cloud of mist is unknown. It may be the result of a mistake of perception between vampires and werewolves. *'Soulless:' The belief that vampires are soulless beings may have stemmed from their ability to shut down their humanity, causing them to block out their emotions and behave without remorse or regret, giving off the impression that they have no conscience and by extension, lack a soul. *'Death:''' Contrary to popular belief, vampires have beating hearts and they cannot function without oxygen. They will, however, be forced to revive after suffocation or oxygen deprivation but will only die again if the circumstances of their revival are less than favourable. Known Vampires